Fresh Dish

Where’s Mildred

When popular Sudbury Street brunch spot Mildred Pierce closed last summer to make way for a condo complex, owners Donna Dooher and Kevin Gallagher coyly announced that Pierce would be resurrected somewhere nearby at some point in the near future. Since then, there’s been much speculation among local foodies as to where that would be.

Mildred’s new digs would have to be large enough to handle the crowds that made the warehouse resto a success and there’d have to be ample parking for the 905 contingent. That rules out just about anywhere along King, Queen or College. Dooher and Gallagher have just offered the following hint on their website – mildredpierce.com – as to the whereabouts of their new home.

“The good karma accumulated by Mildred Pierce [is] now ready to manifest in a new worldly creation: in the heart of Liberty Village. Can you guess where?”

We can try: the cavernous first-floor space of the First Capital development at 85 Hanna across from the 24-hour Dominion. Expect a July launch.

Herbivore sprouts

Kensington Market’s popular vegan café Urban Herbivore (64 Oxford, at Augusta, 416-927-1231) has just tripled in size with the addition of a glassed-in porch that now wraps around its busy corner location. Is this a pre-emptive strike to counter the anticipated arrival of vegetarian rival Wanda’s Pie in the Sky directly across the street later – much later, by the looks of it – this spring?

“No, it was part of the plan right from the beginning,” says Herbivore honcho Stephen Gardner. “But it’s taken us this long to get all the permits approved.”

It’s an odd structure. Because the city owns the sidewalk that it’s built on, it’s literally bolted to public property.

Sayonara Izakaya

Down at Front and Church, Izakaya has fried its last duck gyoza. The closure of the luxe 150-seat Tokyo-inspired resto that made a point of not serving sushi or sashimi just this last Saturday would suggest that Toronto only likes its Japanese cheap, raw and sided with watery miso soup.

“We’ve sold the lease but we haven’t gone out of business,” says Izakaya chef John Sinopoli, explaining the bail. “The location just didn’t work for us. It’s too big and, if there isn’t an event at the ACC or the weather’s bad, business is, too.”

Sinopoli and partner Erik Joyal are switching gears and plan to open a small European-style bistro on Queen East in the former Food Savvy Eatery just down the block from Rodney Bowers’s Citizen by late May.

El Bodegon gone

Long-running Peruvian cantina El Bodegon on the hip College Street strip has been sold. I can’t say I blame the owners. The building alone must be worth 10 times what it was back in the early 80s when they bought it. Watch for the imaginatively named Corner Stone – it’s on a corner, you see, and my guess is there’s someone named Stone involved – to take its place soon.